4B hotspots

The first hotspot from Edward Said's article came from page 199: “Britain ruled the vast territories of India with only a few thousand colonial officers and a few more thousand troops, many of them Indians. France did the same in North Africa and Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese and Belgians in Africa.” When Said says this, he refers to the fact that all of these Imperial nations experienced uprisings by the locals, as a result of the harsh treatment of the locals. The point is that the U.S. is now the imperial power in the Middle East and that, if we are not careful, we could find ourselves in the same position. I wanted to point out that this is very interesting, considering the fact that over 200 years ago we too played the role of the colony being mistreated by its imperial counterpart. I feel that, if we are not careful, history will repeat itself and we will have flipped roles, becoming the imperial power. It seems as though there is a pattern here, and we must learn from the past mistakes of our former enemies and apply what we learn to our current situation.

My second hotspot from this article can be found on page 200: “the media runs the vilest racist stereotypes about Arabs.” I find it interesting that, although we claim to be a “free country” with just and righteous standards, we certainly have a strong opinion of other nations. It definitely says something about the U.S. that the Wall Street Journal, one of the most read periodicals printed in our country, would publish such a racist article. This means that the editors thought that many people would agree with it and find it interesting. I feel that this demonstrates that the American media can sometimes give America a bad name.

My first hotspot for this article is as follows: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold” (Yeats, 221). I feel that this is a description of what Yeats felt the world was coming to at the time the poem was written. I think that perhaps he thought that the world would soon fall apart and that people would desperately be in need of God's help. However, according to Yeats, God would send a beast to destroy mankind once and for all. I think that perhaps this poem was greatly influenced by the fact that the world had just ended the First World War, and that Yeats felt that this was the beginning of the world's destruction. Also, the great depression was only a few years into the future, and the world was likely beginning to feel economic strains.

My second hotspot from this poem was: “That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.” (Yeats, page 222) I think that this is even more proof that Yeats was describing the current situation of the world, since it describes the “twenty centuries” that mankind has lived through. This passage also has significant religious undertones (as well as the rest of the poem), and seems to indicate that mankind has been “sleeping” since Jesus left the earth, but now it will be awakened. Yeats seems to have the attitude that his vision is different than others' and that his is correct. While reading this poem I continually got the impression that Yeats thought that the world would be surprised at the time of the Second Coming, and that he would be able to say “I told you so.”